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Phoebe Apperson Hearst: A Life of Power and Politics

This program is part of our Good Lit series, underwritten by the Bernard Osher Foundation.

Phoebe Apperson Hearst was one of the Gilded Age’s most prominent and powerful women in the Bay Area. She was a financial manager, businesswoman, reformer and philanthropist. She was born into a middle-class, rural Missouri family in 1842, and she died a powerful member of society’s urban elite in 1919. Most people know her as the mother of William Randolph Hearst, the newspaper mogul, and as the wife of George Hearst, the mining tycoon and U.S. senator. But from age 48 until her own death, Phoebe Apperson Hearst shepherded the family fortune, demonstrating intelligence and skill as a financial manager. She supported significant campaigns for children, health reform, women’s rights, higher education, municipal policy formation, progressive voluntary associations, and urban architecture and design. She contributed ideas and funds to the burgeoning Progressive movement, and she was the first female regent of the University of California.

Alexandra Nickliss renders a penetrating portrait of this powerful and often contradictory woman, examining the opportunities and challenges she faced as she navigated local, national and international corridors of influence.

Instructor of History, City College of San Francisco; Author, Phoebe Apperson Hearst: A Life of Power and Politics

Commonwealth Club

The leading national forum open to all for the impartial discussion of public issues important to the membership, community and nation. The Commonwealth Club of California is the nation's oldest and largest public affairs forum. Each year, we bring nearly 500 events on topics ranging across politics, culture, society and the economy to more than 25,000 members and the public, both in-person and via an extensive online and on-air listenership and viewership.